Patagonia Rebelde

Patagonia Rebelde

Arrested workers after the strike's suppression
Date	1920-1922
Location	Santa Cruz Province, Argentina
Also known as	Patagonia Trágica
Participants	Argentine Army Anarchist strikers Patriotic League
Deaths	1,500

Patagonia Rebelde (or Patagonia Trágica) ("Rebel Patagonia" or "Tragic Patagonia" in English) was the name given to the violent suppression of a rural worker's strike in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz in Patagonia between 1920 and 1922. The uprising was put down by colonel Héctor Benigno Varela's 10th Cavalry Regiment of the Argentine Army under the orders of President Hipólito Yrigoyen. Approximately 1,500 rural workers were shot and killed by the Argentine Army in the course of the operations, many of them executed by firing squads after surrendering. Most of the executed were Spanish and Chilean workers who had sought refuge in Argentina's Patagonia after their strike in the city of Puerto Natales in southern Chile on 27 July 1920 was crushed by the Chilean authorities, at the cost of four carabineers killed. At least two Argentine soldiers (corporal Domingo Montenegro and private Fernando Pablo Fischer), three local policemen (sergeant Tomás Rosa and constables Ernesto Bozán and Juan Campos) and a number of ranch owners and their relatives also died during the strife.

In 1920, in the aftermath of the First World War, the price of wool had dropped significantly provoking an economic crisis in sheep-breeding Argentine Patagonia. In August 1920 there were a number of strikes in the province of Santa Cruz, followed by a general strike declared on 1 November. Most of the strikers were shearers and rural workers. The first armed confrontation took place on 2 January 1921 near El Cerrito, where four policemen and a striker were killed, and two policemen and a gendarm were taken hostages. Another gendarm was shot and killed in an ambush at Centinela river several days later. The ranchers and the interim governor Edelmiro Correa Falcón, himself a landowner, used the incidents to ask the federal government to declare the state of emergency in Santa Cruz. As the unrest spread, the government of Hipólito Yrigoyen ordered colonel Héctor Benigno Varela's 10th Cavalry Regiment immediately to the affected area and the Argentine Navy seized the various ports and key facilities in the province. The new police chief in Santa Cruz, Oscar Schweizer, under orders of the new governor of the province, radical Ángel Ignacio Yza, instructed Varela to avoid bloodshed and the army colonel was able to work out a deal with the strikers and the ranch owners, and prohibited the payment of wages in Chilean money. In May 1921 the cavalry regiment returned to Buenos Aires but their leave was cancelled in October as strikes broke out again in the province when the ranch owners reneged on their promise of fairer working conditions. The leader of the strikers was a Galician anarchist, Antonio Soto, general secretary of the Workers Society of Río Gallegos, the local branch of the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation. Manuel Carlés, president of the Argentine Patriotic League is reported to have violently broken up one of the demonstration of the strikers in Río Gallegos with one dead and four injured in the resulting meleé. The month of August saw activity in the ports of Deseado, Santa Cruz, San Julián and Río Gallegos come to a complete standstill with a general strike. Hundreds of strikers believed to be anarchists or Bolsheviks were either thrown in jails or shipped back to Buenos Aires. The Buenos Aires press referred to the armed strikers as "anarchists" and "thieves". At the same time, the Chilean government grew alarmed at the prospect of facing similar unrest in southern Chile and deployed a strong carabineer force under colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo to the city of Puerto Natales. According to historian Miguel Angel Scenna, the Argentine government soon grew suspicious of the deployment of this Chilean force on the Chilean-Argentine border. According to captain Elbio Carlos Anaya, a company commander in the 10th Cavalry Regiment, the Chilean carabineers guarding the mountain passes, let the strikers to cross back and forth into Argentina armed with weapons and without any hindrance on the part of the authorities. On 16 November 1921, however, the Chilean government eventually took sides and allowed colonel Varela and a motorized column of 13 soldiers to take a 50 km shortcut from Rio Turbio to Cancha Carrera through Chilean territory, east of Puerto Natales, along today's Highway 9.